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Store-re or is that Re-store?

So, my story is...

I recently had a client who wanted me to do some restoration on an old photo of hers. It was the last picture she had of her mother. I have to admit I'm no photo restorer person (hardly) however, I have done some old photos of my own. So, I went ahead and gave it my best and even though the image was "wallet-sized" it was in horrible shape. There were black specks all over the face of the woman and white specks on her shirt. I could not do much for the shirt but I worked like crazy on the face, removing the black specks. The image when enlarged still looked grainy so I vectorized the image, which, help clear up a lot of the graininess. I did make a wallet sized image into a tabloid sized image and it was pretty good if I do say so myself.

Sunshine Coast BC, Canada. In a beautiful part of BC's temperate rainforest

Posts

9,864

Re: Store-re or is that Re-store?

And after you remove the spots from her face and the worst from her blouse you can do a sort of frequency separation by duplicating the photo and give the bottom enough gaussian blur( FX tool> smoothing> gaussian ) to smooth things out. This will be your "low frequency layer" On the top layer use the FX tool and use the relief filter to taste. This will be your high frequency layer use edges gray then use an overlay transparency to blend it with the underneath layer.

Re: Store-re or is that Re-store?

Originally Posted by angelize

And after you remove the spots from her face and the worst from her blouse you can do a sort of frequency separation by duplicating the photo and give the bottom enough gaussian blur( FX tool> smoothing> gaussian ) to smooth things out. This will be your "low frequency layer" On the top layer use the FX tool and use the relief filter to taste. This will be your high frequency layer use edges gray then use an overlay transparency to blend it with the underneath layer.

Frances, you are so smart. I'm gonna use that technique next time. Thanks for the tip. I used the gaussian blur for her face and did it in layers.

Sunshine Coast BC, Canada. In a beautiful part of BC's temperate rainforest

Posts

9,864

Re: Store-re or is that Re-store?

Another hint, old photos have a certain ambiance, they are a glimpse back in time you want to preserve that. Don't over smooth the skin or over saturate the colours The idea here is to gently restore an old image not to try and create a brand new photo. I had a go at your lovely lady just using the samples you attached here.

I used the magic lasso to cut her out of the original background and used the colour picker to pick the colour for the new background from the original photo. I brought up the colours in the photo just a little bit less is more here. I used the photo effects brushes to add a bit more darkness to her hair and lips and brighten the whites of her eyes again this was done lightly with the transparency turned down considerably.